Method for inducing a merge candidate block and device using same

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for inducing a merge candidate block and a device using same. An image decoding method involves decoding motion estimation region (MER) related information; determining whether or not a predicted target block and a spatial merge candidate block are included in the same MER; and determining the spatial merge candidate block to be an unavailable merge candidate block when the predicted target block and the spatial merge candidate block are included in the same MER. Accordingly, by parallely performing the method for inducing a merge candidate, parallel processing is enabled and the computation amount and implementation complexity are reduced.

The invention claimed is: 
     
       1. A method of decoding a video signal with a decoding apparatus, comprising:
 determining whether a spatial merge candidate is previously decoded or not; 
 determining whether the spatial merge candidate is included in a same MER (Motion Estimation Region) as a current prediction block; 
 when the spatial merge candidate is previously decoded and is not included in the same MER as the current prediction block, determining that the spatial merge candidate is an available merge candidate for inter prediction of the current prediction block; 
 generating a merge candidate list of the current prediction block, the merge candidate list including the available merge candidate; and 
 obtaining prediction samples of the current prediction block based on the merge candidate list, 
 wherein the spatial merge candidate includes at least one of neighboring blocks adjacent to the current prediction block, the neighboring blocks including a left neighboring block, a top neighboring block, a top-right neighboring block, a left-bottom neighboring block and a top-left neighboring block, 
 wherein, when a size of the MER is 8×8 and a size of a coding block is 8×8, the spatial merge candidate is replaced to a replacement block located outside the MER, the coding block including the current prediction block whose a size is 8×4 or 4×8, and 
 wherein, when the size of the MER is not 8×8 and the size of the coding block is not 8×8, the spatial merge candidate is not replaced to the replacement block located outside the MER. 
 
     
     
       2. The method of  claim 1 , wherein whether the spatial merge candidate is included in the same MER as the current prediction block is determined by using parallel merge level information. 
     
     
       3. The method of  claim 2 , wherein the parallel merge level information is related to the size of the MER. 
     
     
       4. The method of  claim 2 , wherein whether the spatial merge candidate is included in the same MER as the current prediction block is determined by using position information in addition to the parallel merge level information, the position information including position information of the current prediction block and position information of the spatial merge candidate. 
     
     
       5. The method of  claim 4 , wherein when a value resulting from a bit shift operation of the position information of the current prediction block is not equal to a value resulting from the bit shift operation of the position information of the spatial merge candidate, it is determined that the spatial merge candidate is not included in the same MER as the current prediction block. 
     
     
       6. The method of  claim 5 , wherein the bit shift operation is performed using the parallel merge level information.